Nikita Koshkin first appeared on the
International concert scene in 1980 with the performance
of The Prince’s Toys Suite by Vladimir Mikulka
at the Cannington Festival in England, organised and
directed by John W. Duarte. Without question it was
Duarte’s indefatigable efforts in the promotion
of this remarkable piece that brought it to the attention
of guitarists. First published in the Soviet Union in
1981, it has been subsequently published anew in Japan,
and more recently in France. The story line, obviously
based on an old nursery rhyme, is clearly annunciated
in the titles of the several segments.

This is programmatic music at its best, drawing its
inspiration, one suspects, from earlier Russian masterpieces
such as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Swan Lake
ballets and other Russian compositions dealing with
children’s fantasies. The musical language itself,
though, is unique and unprecedented in the guitar repertoire,
particularly through the means of revolutionary technical
devices invented by the composer.

Note by Matanya Ophee

Joaquín RODRIGO (1901–1999)
Elogio de la guitarra (Allegro)

Joaquín Rodrigo’s contribution
to the guitar is now appreciated as one of the central
pillars of the modern concert repertoire. Though his
compositions for the solo instrument comprise no more
than some 25 titles, the significance of his output
is greater than the sum of its parts because of his
extraordinary insight into the nature of the guitar.
Moreover, his seminal masterpiece, the Concierto de
Aranjuez, has proved to be one of the most popular classical
works created in the twentieth century.

Elogio de la guitarra (In Praise of the Guitar) (1971),
is an extended work of great charm and momentum in three
intense movements. Rodrigo delighted in writing introductions
and his comments on this composition are of particular
interest: “My intention was to demand a precise
and infallible technique of the guitarist, as well as
a profound sensitivity to the framework and thematics
of the music. I have composed my ‘challenge’
to the guitarist, starting rather comfortably with the
‘sonata’ form. The first movement, Allegro,
is made up of two parts: the first is a chordal progression
embellished by scale triplets. This leads to a melodic
theme which combines at the end of the movement with
chordal writing.”

Rodrigo’s wife, Victoria Kamhi explained that
in this work Rodrigo ‘managed to encompass the
brilliant possibilities of classical guitar music, as
well as the diabolical requirements made of its player,
due to the characteristics of this instrument’.
Elogio de la guitarra remains one of the most technically
demanding works in the contemporary repertoire and a
thrilling experience for the listener.

J.S. BACH (1685–1750)
Sonata II, BWV 1003 (Andante)

Aspects of J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for
solo violin have attracted guitarists since the nineteenth
century when Francisco Tárrega made arrangements
of the Fugue (Sonata I, BWV 1001) and Bourrée
(Partita I, BWV 1002). Andrés Segovia’s
transcription of the mighty Chaconne (Partita II, BWV
1004), received worldwide attention following its première
in Paris in 1935, but it was not until the 1950s and
1960s that entire suites were adapted for guitar and
performed in recitals.

The third movement of the Sonata II, BWV 1003, in A
minor, Andante, has been described by the violinist,
Jaap Schröder, as ‘one of the most remarkable
movements in the baroque literature for unaccompanied
violin’. He compares this aria to a duet between
a singer and the lute. A straightforward ‘walking’
bass supports the beautiful melody, once again ideally
suited to a plucked instrument.

Manuel PONCE (1882–1948)
Sonatina meridional (Campo)

Manuel Ponce was the founding father of twentieth century
Mexican music. His pupil, Carlos Chávez (1899–1978)
said of him: ‘It was Ponce who created a real
consciousness of the richness of Mexican folk art.’
Segovia and Ponce first met in Mexico in 1923, and from
that time onwards the composer devoted himself to writing
many pieces for the guitar, nearly all of them dedicated
to Segovia. Of these compositions, which include preludes,
suites, a concerto, variations, several sonatas, and
works for guitar and harpsichord, Segovia has written:
‘Large or small, they are, all of them, pure and
beautiful.’

Ponce’s Sonatina meridional (Sonatina of the South)
was completed in Paris in December 1930. Segovia had
requested the composer to write ‘a Sonatina—not
Sonatina—of a purely Spanish character…something
as gracious as the one by Torroba and with much more
musical substance’. In a further letter written
in May 1932, Segovia announced that he intended to give
the première of the work at the Salle Gaveau,
Paris. It was published in 1939 in the Schotts Segovia
Guitar Archives under the title of Sonatina Meridional
with subtitles for each movement. Segovia first recorded
the work for HMV in June 1949. The first movement, Campo,
suggests the atmosphere of the Iberian countryside.

Antonio JOSÉ (1902–1936)
Sonata (Final)

Antonio José was praised by Maurice Ravel as
a composer who would ‘become the greatest Spanish
musician of our century’. But his arrest and execution
near his home city of Burgos in 1936 during the Spanish
Civil War cast his music into a subsequent obscurity
which has only recently been remedied. A monograph about
his life and work has been published by the municipality
of Burgos.Considerable interest was aroused by the discovery
in the late 1980s of the Sonata, which Antonio José
finished on 23 August 1933. One movement was given its
première in Burgos by Regino Sáinz de
la Maza in November 1934.

The Sonata offers further perspectives on the expansion
of the guitar repertoire during the early twentieth-century
Spanish musical renaissance. The work established Antonio
José’s reputation beside those of his distinguished
contemporaries who respected the guitar as an expressive
medium. José’s Sonata is a composition
requiring virtuosity as well as emotional depth and
insight.

J.S. BACH
Lute Partita in E major, BWV 1006a (Prelude)

In 1921 Dr Hans Dagobert Bruger published his edition
of Bach’s ‘lute suites’, allotting
numbers to each suite, thus bringing in the slightly
inaccurate concept as if Bach himself had organised
the composition of these suites in a deliberate order.
In Bruger’s scheme of things, the Partita in E
major was designated as Lute Suite IV, and for various
reasons has long been regarded by guitarists as perhaps
the most technically challenging of the so-called ‘lute
suites’.

The instrumentation of the autograph copy, now in Tokyo,
is not explicitly stated. Wolfgang Schmieder, the eminent
scholar and author of the Bach catalogue, the Bach-Werke-
Verzeichnis (BWV), even wondered if it was intended
for harp, though it could be for keyboard, baroque lute
or even luteharpsichord, a keyboard instrument strung
with gut to imitate lute timbres.
In the Staatsbibliothek Berlin-Dahlem are two eighteenth
century copies and an autograph copy in a violin version.
J. S. Bach twice orchestrated the Prelude as part of
Cantatas, BWV 120A and BWV 29. It is clear that in the
eighteenth century composers were accustomed to making
arrangements of specific pieces for a wide range of
instruments. For that reason it is not surprising that
this particular suite is very idiomatic to the technical
and expressive qualities of the modern classical guitar.

The Prélude, consists of broken chords and bariolage
(lit. ‘medley of colours’) string passages
in perpetual motion, creating textures reminiscent of
the lute preludes of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the great
eighteenth-century master of the baroque lute, personally
well acquainted with Bach himself.

Enrique GRANADOS (1867–1916)
Valses poéticos

Enrique Granados, like Isaac Albéniz,
was one of the great Spanish romantic composers. Though
neither Granados nor Albéniz wrote directly for
the guitar, their art constantly evoked, as Manuel de
Falla expressed it, ‘certain guitaristic values’.

Valses poéticos were part of a collection for
piano under the title of Valses de amor from which Granados
selected seven pieces and added an introduction, dedicating
the work to Joaquín Malats, like himself a distinguished
pianist. The composition opens not with a poetic waltz
but with a vivace molto introduction in duple time.
The succeeding dances create various moods associated
with the waltz, such as the melodic, the nostalgic,
the humorous, the elegant, and the sentimental. The
penultimate movement is a vigorous presto in six-eight
time reminiscent of the style brillant of Chopin, and
then the first waltz returns to provide a serene coda.

Manuel Ponce’s output included five arrangements
of wellknown Mexican songs and in 1928 three of these
were published by Schott in Segovia’s guitar editions
under the title of Tres Canciones populares mexicanas
(Three Popular Mexican Songs).

The first of these, La Pajarera (The Aviary) tells the
story of the beloved Rosita, whose lover wishes to capture
singing wild birds for her, including goldfinches and
sparrows. But the little aviary full of singing birds
is really the lover’s heart. Por tí mi
corazón (For you my heart), is a beautiful love-song
in which the poet declares his devotion.

Finally Valentina, one of the popular songs from the
Mexican Revolution, includes the sentiments, ‘If
I have to die tomorrow, better to die today…But
only if I can see you!’

Jean-Philippe RAMEAU (1683–1764)
Le rappel des oiseaux • La Dauphine

These two pieces were transcribed from the harpsichord
repertoire. Jean-Philippe Rameau, one of the greatest
names in the history of French music, is renowned as
a composer of operas, cantatas, motets, and harpsichord
music and also as one of the eminent theorists of the
eighteenth century. In the early part of his career
he was appointed organist for a number of influential
posts at cathedrals in Avignon, Clermont, Dijon, and
Lyon. In 1722 he moved permanently to Paris where the
first of his theoretical works, a 450 page Traité
de l’harmonie (Treatise of Harmony), was published,
followed four years later by his Nouveau système
de musique théorique (New System of Musical Theory).

After 1733, Rameau embarked on the composition of a
great amount of dramatic music, operas and opera-ballets,
some of which has since been lost. This area of his
output amounted to more than a hundred separate acts
and include the famous tragédies, Hippolyte et
Aricie and Castor et Pollux as well as the opera-ballets
Les Indes galantes and Les fêtes d’Hebé.
In 1706, 1724 and 1729, he published his first collections
of keyboard works. Le rappel de oiseaux (The Call of
the Birds), was printed in Pièces de clavecin
avec une méthode pour la méchanique des
doigts (Pieces for Keyboard with a Method for the Mechanism
of the Fingers) (1724). La Dauphine is a late example
of Rameau’s harpsichord pieces and was composed
in celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin to Maria-Josepha
of Saxony in 1747.

Both of these transcriptions from Rameau’s keyboard
music represent baroque imagistic or early ‘impressionistic’
writing rather than falling into the category of dance
movements within a suite. Le rappel des oiseaux, in
two-four time, uses a number of effects to mimic birdsong
such as imitative moments between left and right hands
on the harpsichord, passages played by both hands together
in intervals of sixths, and the subtle use of appropriate
ornamentation.

La Dauphine is naturally a more stately composition,
based on three beats in the bar. After an initial flourish
of embellishment, flowing semiquavers take over in the
first section of the work. At times the pealing of wedding
bells is strongly implicit. The first half is contrasted
against the characteristically French dotted rhythms
and intricate ornamentation at the beginning of the
second section, until once again the fluent semiquavers
return, this time in a lower register. At the end, there
is a dignified quasi cadenza to round off the composition.

Joaquín RODRIGO
Invocación y Danza

Joaquín Rodrigo, composer of the renowned Concierto
de Aranjuez, is one of the great Spanish composers of
the twentieth century. He extended the romantic impressionist
tradition of Albéniz, Granados and Falla, but
was deeply influenced by French music, having studied
from 1927 to 1932 with Paul Dukas in Paris. Though blind
from childhood Rodrigo wrote almost two hundred works,
including orchestral, choral and ballet music, many
concertos, a host of songs, and a quantity of instrumental
solos.

The composer’s contribution to the guitar is now
one of the central pillars of the modern concert repertoire.
Over the years Rodrigo explored the Spanish nature of
the guitar, responding to the distinguished history
of plucked instruments going back to the sixteenth century.
Rodrigo’s compositions for solo guitar comprise
no more than some 25 titles. Yet the significance of
his output is far greater than the sum of its parts
because of his extraordinary insight into the nature
of the guitar, developed over many years.

Invocación y Danza (Homenaje a Manuel de Falla)
dedicated to the Venezuelan guitarist, Alirio Díaz,
won first prize in the 1961 Coupe International de Guitare,
held in Paris. The French magazine Combat described
the work as ‘a page full of song, poetry, Mediterranean
finesse, and elegant writing’.

From a subtle opening of harmonics and fragments of
arpeggios, the Invocación flowers into an intricate
pattern of melody and broken chords in which delicacy
of effect is matched by clarity and complexity. The
Danza is the Andalusian polo, a reminder of the last
of Manuel de Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs.
After the rhythmic opening bars, the music develops
into passages of tremolo and brilliant showers of demisemiquavers,
the tremolo returning eventually in an extended section.
The piece closes with sparse harmonics, a fleeting but
expressive reference to a theme from Falla’s ballet,
El Amor Brujo, and a final murmuring arpeggio.

Turgay Erdener (b. 1957) has taught analysis,
composition and harmony at the Ankara State Conservatoire
since 1979. As a contemporary Turkish composer he has
written a considerable amount of incidental scores for
stage presentations, operetta and ballet, a number of
works for orchestra, as well as chamber and vocal music,
and instrumental pieces.

Five Grotesques are full of musical surprises, twists
and turns, hence the ‘grotesque’ element.
Quasi una marcia, for example, is a light parody of
a march, the gestures being jerky and humorous rather
than martial. Allegro energico is similarly witty with
unexpected textures following quickly one after the
other. A middle section offers a contrasting song-like
aspect before the reprise of the first section.

Leo Brouwer (b. 1939) from Cuba is acknowledged as one
of the most challenging and innovative of contemporary
musicians. His compositions range from solo guitar pieces
to symphonic works, including concertos, chamber music,
and many film scores. His prolific output for guitar
has developed through various styles embracing the avant-garde
and the experimental, as well as neo-romanticism. Sonata,
composed in 1990, is dedicated to Julian Bream who gave
the première of the work on 27 January 1991,
at the Wigmore Hall, London.

The following comments are based on Julian Bream’s
note about the piece.The three movements take their
unity from a thematic idea introduced at the beginning
of the composition, a motif of eight notes with the
interval of a major second and minor third. Fandangos
y Boleros begins with a short preamble which leads on
to the first subject. The second subject is in dotted
rhythm accompanied by a double octave pedal. Following
the development section, the coda quotes fragments from
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral.

Sir William Walton’s Five Bagatelles were written
for Julian Bream and dedicated to Malcolm Arnold ‘with
admiration and affection for his 50th birthday’.
Given their première by Julian Bream at the 1972
Bath Festival they were immediately acknowledged as
masterpieces of the contemporary guitar repertoire.

The first Bagatelle is a virtuosic, mercurial piece
with an espressivo middle section while Alla cubana
is a lyrically effervescent movement with rhythms evoking
Latin-American music. The final movement, Con slancio
(leaping forward) is full of vivid scalic passages and
incisive chords, involving the full range of the fingerboard
in a brilliant climax.

Walton also arranged Five Bagatelles for orchestra under
the title of Varii Capricci. The music inspired Sir
Frederick Ashton to choreograph a ballet performed at
Covent Garden as a memorial to the composer in March
1983.